GQ Magazine: Arizona Cardinals are the 19th-worst sports franchise

Gramatica, a kicker for the Arizona Cardinals, celebrated kicking a 42-yard field goal in the first half of a game against the New York Giants. His celebration was so excessive that it caused him to tear his left ACL and miss the rest of the season. (AP Photo/Bill Kostroun)

GQ Magazine recently had a little fun for their October edition, as writer Rob Tannenbaum ranked the top 20 worst sports franchises.

Not surprisingly, the Cardinals couldn't escape the list of the lowliest professional organizations, coming in at No. 19.

While GQ didn't exactly specify what its qualifications were, the intro to the piece says it all:

For some sports fans, losing is poetry. And the longer it goes on, the more literary it becomes, like an aria of suffering. The teams on this list are not those teams. These teams suck. They suck epically, inventively, in all kinds of ways. They're stupid. They're greedy. Some of them are even a little bit evil. All of them torment their fans, confronting them with the same question, over and over, year after year: Have you considered rooting for somebody else?

The Cardinals, who have just three winning seasons and one Super Bowl appearance since moving to the Valley in 1988, were hit pretty hard by Tannenbaum's analysis.

19. Arizona CardinalsFile under: Oh, who cares?

The Cardinals have been so bad for so long—just eight playoff trips in eighty years, including one twenty-six-year dry spell—that they could be right at the top of this list. But they're just too marginal, too irrelevant. (Think about it: Have you ever met an Arizona Cardinals fan?) Their awfulness has no grandeur. One classic moment says it all: In 2001, their kicker, Bill Gramatica, blew out his ACL while celebrating a field goal. In the first quarter.

Valley fans have heard far worse, though, and bringing up an injury that occurred 12 years ago wasn't exactly 'burn' material, nevertheless it's not fun to go back down memory lane -- especially when most of the memories are remainders of futility and frustration.